256 colors
- smokku
The color palette now features a full 256 colors.
During the development of CGIA code, I realized there was no benefit to keeping the color palette
at 128 colors. Using a 7-bit color index offers no advantage over the full 8-bit index.
I have no need for the 7th bit as a flag, such as the blink flag used by TED.
The disadvantage of a 7-bit index is that I must account for this bit in the code
when indexing palette tables. The code reads one byte and then needs to clear the 7th bit
to avoid exceeding the palette table size.
After discussing and exploring options on the Discord channel,
we decided to add one more bit to the hue selector rather than the brightness selector.
The 16x16 option is more natural and provides a balanced palette but is not very interesting.
The 32x8 option is weird and gives a distinctive look. Therefore, we went for the 32x8 option.
This palette is generated using a simple HTML page.
Here’s a GIMP palette file: X65-palette_256.gpl.
Below are palette analyses:
Finally, here is the text mode screen, displayed in the full glory of 256 colors:
